LAUGHING SICKNESS: POEMS

Love poems, story
poems, poems happy and sad and angry: Kathleen Driskell moves
as gracefully from lyric to narrative, from mood to mood,
as an attentive mother guarding her children's sleep. There
is a calm vibrancy to this book; even its darkest pages pulse
with compassion. Kathleen Driskell is a wonder. So is Laughing
Sickness.

~ Fred Chappell

Nativity by Kathleen Driskell It was the first and only time I had seen it, the way the eyes lose everything, become unholy, become things. My dog, beloved, had traded the exotic green sweetness of some neighbor's discarded anti-freeze, unknowingly, for her life. For a week, the young vet placated me, telling me maybe, maybe, though he knew there was no chance, but just pregnant with our first son, I ordered the clear fluid to continue pumping through her body because I would have nothing of anything but life. Now pregnant with our second child, it is what I think of when I wake at night, wondering how much the tests will reveal, worried about again risking it all, risking our three lives on this new life. I remember the IV's final feeding: I held her, good dog, watched her eyes, not realizing how ready she was to go, how readily she would go. When we announced this second pregnancy, friends and family offered not one wary word. No one said consider what you already have, what you are risking. As if there is only one heart for all of us, now strong enough, rugged enough to make room for any sort of letting go.